2.3 Shared Assemblies

Assemblies can be
private or shared, as illustrated by Figure 2-3.
Each application that uses a private
assembly has its own copy, which is
stored alongside the other application components. If there are two
applications installed on the same computer, and each application
relies on the same private assembly, then there will be two copies of
the assembly files installed. Each time you install a new application
that relies on the private assembly, you create new instances of the
assembly files on disk. Each assembly is independent of the others,
and each application is completely self-contained.

Figure 2-3. Private and shared assemblies

By contrast, several applications can use a single instance of a
shared assembly. The assembly is placed in a
common location (a shared directory or network server), and every
application that requires the assembly uses the same assembly disk
files. More than one copy of a shared assembly can be installed, and
groups of applications can rely on different instances, as
illustrated by Figure 2-4.

The .NET Framework also provides the Global Assembly
Cache (GAC), which is a
central repository for shared assemblies. All applications that rely
on a shared assembly stored in the GAC use the same disk files, as
illustrated by Figure 2-5; such applications do not
need to be configured to find shared assemblies in specific
locations; the GAC is always available to all applications. See Section 2.5.1 for
further details.

Figure 2-5. The GAC hosts shared assemblies

When we say that applications
"share" an assembly, we mean that
they use the same disk file. Each application is given its own copy
of the data types contained in the assembly, and no data is shared
between the applications. See Chapter 4 for more
information on the role of an assembly in an application.

The benefits of sharing an assembly are
administrativethe
assembly security policies and configuration that we discuss in the
following chapters are applied to a shared assembly once, affecting
all of the applications that rely on the assembly, whereas each
instance of a private assembly must be configured individually.